PTI dragged country towards financial mess: Marriyum Aurangzeb

PESHAWAR  -  Federal Minister for In­formation Maryum Au­rangzeb said on Tuesday that the Pakistan Teh­reek-e-Insaf's four-year rule was to blame for the country's inflation and that Imran’s govern­ment had led the nation closer to bankruptcy.

Speaking at a news conference at the Pe­shawar Press Club, she claimed that Imran Khan's time in office was mostly devoted to raising people's expectations.

She claimed that Prime Minister Sheh­baz Sharif assumed of­fice in the interest of the nation and put the nation on the right road through persever­ance and commitment. She said that in 2016, during the Nawaz Sharif government, the nation successfully finished the IMF programme. “The PTI admin­istration abolished its own Ehtisab Commission a year after it was estab­lished. In order to escape facing pros­ecution for the BRT scande, the PTI government continued with judicial stay orders,” she said. According to her, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa residents did not elect PTI to office because of the destruction of public prop­erty on May 9. She said that the PTI leadership had made up allegations of wrongdoing in order to make the constitutionally mandated dismissal of the government look scandalous.

She appealed to media to hold off on reporting unconfirmed news. She stated in response to a query that there was no division amongst the coalition parties. She said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had the sup­port of all government parties.

After the assembly’s constitutional­ly mandated time was over, she stat­ed that it would be dissolved in or­der to hold general election. She said the coalition partners had discussed all significant decisions before they were made. She added that people who would accuse others of corrup­tion wanted the courts to cease look­ing into the cases involving foreign money and 190 million pounds, but PTI has started filing applications in the court to suspend the probe.

She said that none of the opposi­tion leaders had attempted to escape going to court, claiming that the Im­ran Khan rule had not even spared the ladies of the opposition leaders.

The minister said that once des­perate for probe into the purported cipher related to the regime change, Imran is now vehemently opposing investigations into multiple cases, in­cluding the Toshakhana theft, foreign funding, and Al-Qadir Trust case. 

She said the PTI chairman creat­ed a fake narrative by waving the so-called cipher during his last ad­dress to a public gathering in Islam­abad as prime minister just to give an impression that he was ousted from power as the result of a regime change operation. Ironically, he was the only prime minister in the coun­try’s history who was removed from his office through a no-confidence motion, she added.

“Today, this person is pleading be­fore the courts to halt the trial in the prohibited funding case and assert­ing that he did not know what was inside the closed envelop which had 190 million pounds and brought up before his cabinet for approval,” she remarked. The minister said the PTI chief was opposing investigations into the Toshakhana theft and want­ed his military secretary at that time to answer before the court. 

“He received the gifts from the Toshakhana and sold them then why the military secretary should be held accountable?” the minister ques­tioned. On the other hand, she said, the three times prime minister (Nawaz Sharif) had faced the courts coura­geously and proved all the allegations against him wrong. She asserted that the PTI got stay order from the apex court in the BRT Peshawar corrup­tion case and made all-out efforts to stop probe into the matter. The min­ister said the PTI vowed to construct 350 dams in the country, but in fact, its leaders - “a gang of looters” made the people “dam fool”. She pointed out that the “foreign agent” responsible for masterminding the May 9 tragedy had recently tweeted, asking who ben­efited from the mayhem. “Only the en­emies of the country benefitted from the acts of vandalism and arson,” the minister claimed. As regards the news item published in Friday Times about Azam Chaudhry, she said the story was published without taking the govern­ment’s point of view, which was un­professional and fell short of journal­istic ethics and standards.